Reuters Institute Fellowship Paper University of Oxford A REPORTING DISASTER? The interdependence of media and aid agencies in a competitive compassion market by Monika Kalcsics Michaelmas Term 2011 Sponsor: APA, Austrian Press Agency Contents Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: The state of disaster reporting and its challenges 4 2 Aid agencies and the media: 10 How their symbiosis feeds a content-hungry disaster news market 2.1 Looking back, moving forward? 10 Media-savvy NGOs + Blurring the lines + Information in the new media age + Competitive compassion market + An emerging frustration 2.2 NGOs as information donors 16 NGOs acting as citizen journalists + Journalists’ immersion in the field 3 Communicating distant suffering: Are we getting ethical content? 24 3.1 Getting the message out 24 We “self-edit” + Simplistic communication + Emotive pictures + New media ethics 3.2 Are the locals heard? 30 The self-regarding of the media and the aid agencies + Environment of mistrust + Two-way flow of information 4 Conclusions & Recommendations 37 Bibliography 2 Acknowledgments I am very grateful to my funder, APA, the Austrian Press Agency, for nominating me as the first broadcast journalist from Austria to attend the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The Reuters Institute is THE place to discuss and analyse the zeitgeist of journalism in an increasingly interconnected world. I would particularly like to thank James Painter, the head of the Journalism Fellowship Programme, for his encouragement and occasional pointed comments (all deserved!), spiced up with a good portion of British humour. Many thanks to David Levy and John Lloyd for their valued input and engagement in the wide variety of debates during the term, bringing their distinctive perspectives. Sara Kalim, Alex Reid, Kate Hanneford-Smith and Rebecca Edwards have been a splendid and invaluable help across my time in Oxford. The Institute wouldn’t be what it is without their professionalism in backing and managing each term, and answering the cacophony of demands and requests with an ever friendly smile and incredible patience. Glenda Cooper has been a very supportive and knowledgeable supervisor, giving me valuable insights into the Anglo-Saxon debate on the subject. It is encouraging to work with people like Glenda who share the conviction to move this debate forward. To Eugene Quinn, my mischiefmaker, the devil’s advocate to my thoughts, a very special Danke for your commitment and style. The author Besides being a freelance radio journalist and producer for the Austrian broadcaster ORF, I have also worked periodically as emergency aid worker for the Caritas network 1, most recently during the Pakistan floods in 2010, where I was communications coordinator. All observations and comments in this research are personal and do not represent the views of Caritas. My combined career as a journalist and emergency aid worker has allowed me to understand the challenges we face when confronted with a humanitarian disaster and the need to report it. 1 Caritas Internationalis is a confederation of 165 Catholic relief, development and social service organisations operating in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. 3 1 Introduction: The state of disaster reporting and its challenges The title had an explosive word in it: truth. “Haiti and the Truth about NGOs” 2, a 45min radio documentary aired on 11 th January 2011 on BBC Radio 4. The timing was no coincidence, exactly one year after a massive earthquake hit the Caribbean Island. Around 250,000 people had lost their lives and another 1 million were affected. A year on, BBC radio journalist Edward Stourton travelled to Haiti to look at problems in the aid industry. “How far has the way we help gone bad?” 3, he asked himself, concerned that the billions of dollars of donations and aid pledges were not reflected in the living conditions of survivors.“ Is what has happened in Haiti symptomatic of a wider crisis of humanitarianism?” 4 The radio documentary generated strong debate in online discussion forums amongst aid agencies. “It went for the jugular”5, wrote John Mitchell, director of the humanitarian think tank ALNAP 6, on AlertNet 7. “It seemed to me that Stourton was persuading the listener the humanitarian system, in Haiti and by implication elsewhere, is a system that has lost its moral compass and is tired if not completely broken.” 8 Amongst many other responses to the programme was one by former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sir John Holmes, saying that he too thought that the Stourton piece was unnecessarily negative.9 Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive of Oxfam GB felt that the “absolute lack of recognition of what has been achieved in the last year” was “irresponsible and misleading”.10 Six months later the BBC dispatched TV news presenter Ben Brown to a disaster area. He reported on a drought the public was largely unaware of. On 4 th July Brown sent a 2:05min report 11 from the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab in Kenya, to a Western viewership. 2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xcc0k. 3 Edward Stourton, “Haiti and the Truth about NGOs”, BBC Radio 4 Documentary , 11 January 2011. 4 Ibid. 5 John Mitchell, “Media and Humanitarianism – Haiti and the media”, AlertNet , 12 January 2011: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/media-and-humanitarianism/haiti-and-the-media. 6 The Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) is a network, which incorporates many of the key humanitarian organisations and experts from across the humanitarian sector. It was established in 1997, following the multi-agency evaluation of the Rwanda genocide. See: http://www.alnap.org/ 7 AlertNet, established by the Thomson Reuters Foundation Service, is a newswire dedicated to humanitarian issues. See: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/ 8 John Mitchell, op.cit. 9 Sir John Holmes, 13 January 2011: http://www.alnap.org/blog/23.aspx. 10 Dame Barbara Stocking, 14 January 2011: http://www.alnap.org/blog/23.aspx. 11 Ben Brown, “Horn of Africa hit by worst drought in 60 years”, 4 July 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14020452. 4 The report showed emaciated children’s bodies with flies around their eyes, and suffering, speechless adults. This time there was no public criticism from aid agencies, although the report used images of hunger which ignore a basic principle of aid agencies, to “recognise disaster victims as dignified humans, not hopeless objects” 12 . But this report came at the beginning of an untold crisis, which needed the eye of a big broadcaster to get seen. Four days later, Brown’s report “Horn of Africa: ‘A vision of hell’” 13 was accompanied by the news that the UK Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) 14 had launched an emergency appeal to help the more than 10 million people affected by severe drought. On the BBC website a “To make a donation”-information including a direct donation call number was added to the report. 15 These two events are symptomatic of the relationship between aid agencies and the media: a mutual need and mutual mistrust mark their complex interdependence. Either the audience is given simplistic donations stories which don’t give time or space to question the how, or the audience is confronted with sharp, and increasingly polemical criticism of aid agencies. 16 Neither of these two extreme attitudes helps to understand the complex realities on the ground. Aid agencies are desperate to raise awareness and public funds for their humanitarian work and the news media are determined to generate readers, ratings and revenue. This interaction is conducted in this evolving and increasingly globalised and contested communicative space, say Simon Cottle and David Nolan. 17 Who cares? Many people, according to two recent studies on the UK public’s understanding of aid, commissioned by the British Red Cross 18 and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) 19 . Apparently the majority of the population is interested in finding out more about 12 The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non- Governmental Organisations in Disaster Relief: http://www.sphereproject.org/content/view/146/84/lang,English/. 13 Ben Brown, “Horn of Africa drought: ‘a vision of hell’” , 8 July 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- 14078074. 14 The Disaster and Emergency Committee (DEC) unites the 14 leading UK agencies in their efforts to finance relief for people suffering major disasters in poorer countries. 15 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14078074, op. cit. 16 See: Alan Little, “The Truth about NGOs“, BBC World Service, 3 part series (Malawi, India, Haiti), December 2011, January 2012: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00mmn26. 17 Simon Cottle and David Nolan, „How the media’s codes and rules influence the ways NGOs work“, in: NGOs and the News: Exploring a Changing Communication Landscape, Nieman Journalism Lab , 16 November 2009: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/11/simon-cottle-and-david-nolan-how-the-medias- codes-and-rules-influence-the-ways-ngos-work/. 18 Harriet Penrose, “Attitudes towards humanitarian aid amongst the UK general public“, Dispatches from Disaster Zones , British Red Cross, [email protected], 30 September 2011. 19 Johanna Lindstrom and Spencer Henson, „What does the public think, know and do about aid and development?“, Institute of Development Studies , October 2011: 5 disaster aid. For instance 74 percent of the British people want to know how a community is coping three, six and twelve months after a disaster has struck. 20 Another key finding is that the public strongly supports international development charities. “Charities providing overseas aid and disaster relief are the most popular cause for regular individual charity donations.” 21 Does this imply that instead of “compassion fatigue” 22 we are entering a new era of compassion regard? The huge success of the DEC appeal for East Africa surprised both media and aid agencies.